When we were recently covering the Gaming Fest in the city of Arucas in the beautiful island of Gran Canaria we also had the chance to attend a bunch of industry and edugaming panels, and to talk with their respective speakers. Rodrigo García is the director of growth markets and international projects at ESL FaceIt group, and other than the topics discussed during his talk (including the so-called esports bubble and the upcoming Esports World Cup), we touched upon several competitive games such as EAFC 24, Dota 2, or the still recent Counter-Strike 2, in the interview below.
"Yeah, I mean CSGO has been in the scene for I don't know how many years now, and it was very consolidated", recalls García when asked about the switch to CS2 as a turning point for both the community and tournament organisers. "The enthusiasm towards the game was very good, all the dynamics worked... It was, you know, like a mature wine if you kind of compare it, right?
"Now with CS2", he continues in the video as CS:GO is no more, "it was a tension between the community wanting the game to be launched right now -we were all eager to play it- but at the same time the developer taking time to actually make it happen. And then what we found out right now was that the game was released. But then at the same time, paradoxically the community was not pleased because there were things that were not working properly Right?"
"So you can't have both", he concludes about Valve's move. "You can't have it really quickly and that it really, really works. So as you said we've [ESL FaceIt Group] run the first massive tournament in Australia using Counter-Strike 2. Technically speaking, there were some hurdles that we needed to overcome. The game itself is not in the prime yet, so it's just going to take a little bit more time to polish the rough edges. And then get it to a stage where it is... We did see a huge spike of players wanting to try something new, but just because it was, you know, something new. We'll see how that trend stabilises over time. But yeah, we're just expecting the game to be as polished as Global Offensive, which is long gone", the director waves off.
Almost three months into CS2, how do you feel about Valve's switch and the game's current status? Leave a comment below.
